jack

Looking good. As ProDave says, you have to let us know about the interesting find!

I haven't gotten around to doing anything with this yet, although it's only one or two tasks away at the moment. Currently, I think I'll use plastic tiles like what you've done, but still pondering how to get an outward slope to the slab. I've thought of a few ways, but none of them is perfect.

Read the sheet again. This product contains one specific glyphosate salt (glyphosate isopropylammonium) and various salts of a different chemical: 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic acid. Edited to add: these two herbicides are widely used in combination: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlist_Weed_Control_System

I'm going to try a third time before I go out in the garden and do something more productive. I'm not sure why you keep answering as though I'm asking why glyphosate is sold as a salt. I'm asking why a product containing glyphosate IPA salt 27.9 % (w/w) ***AND THAT ALSO CONTAINS*** 32.0 % (w/w) of 2,4-D DMA derivate salts is: Hence why I've twice now said:

I'm asking out of genuine ignorance: how does that statement relate to:

That data sheet says that there's a significant amount of other ingredients beyond glyphosate: (By mass, there's actually more of the other active ingredients than gylphosate.) I have no idea whether those additional ingredients warrant the higher price, but on the face of it they don't look like the same product.

I looked into this extensively, and would have gone for these if I'd had the budget. The tiles themselves aren't massively expensive per square metre, but add in decent adhesive and labour and it starts adding up!

We used Hilliard too, and he was great when dealing with building control's questions.

What does Eggar say? I seem to recall that for at least one flooring system, the preferred approach for minimal noise was nails (or was it screws?) at one end, and glue-only on the remaining edges.

It's been perfectly acceptable to spell "phone" without an apostrophe since the 1800s.

Sure, I was just pointing out what my parents in law have set up. I know that a per-visit contract is an option, because they looked into it. They did the maths and figured out that the annual maintenance fee would always have been cheaper than paying per action. My main point was that you can't make changes yourself (I believe), so either you pay a maintenance fee or a per-change fee - either way, there's no way around giving money to an installer if you want the system kept up to date.

The better the insulation, the less point there is having lots of different zones. Most (all?) of us with Passivhaus levels of insulation and airtightness just run the entire downstairs a slab as a single zone. You could, of course, alter the set flow rates per room if you preferred one to always be a little warmer or cooler than the others, but it doesn't end up making a massive difference due to the way heat moves around within the house anyway.

I'm actually quite surprised Loxone hasn't done something similar. The kit isn't that cheap (albeit it's cheaper than a lot of other options), but then they continue to provide app and software updates forever at no cost. I'd have thought even something like £50-100 a year wouldn't be unreasonable for most people, and would make them a lot of additional cash over the life of the product.

The flip side, of course, is that we run our heating for much more of the year than you. And heating costs us money, whereas cooling is more or less free, given we only need it when the sun is shining...

They weren't available when did my installation, but yes, they're definitely cool! Loxone can theoretically do all of that. The only thing that's missing (unless things have changed since I last looked) is the availability of decent quality retractive switch grids like those you showed for Control4. I couldn't find anything even vaguely like those with just plain retractive switches. A lot of people use KNX switches paired with Loxone, as that opens up a lot of new (and expensive!) possibilities for switches. Incidentally, my parents in law have Control4. They pay an annual maintenance fee to the installer, which pays for updates and any tweaks they need. I personally don't fancy spending money year after year on this sort of thing.

No matter how many times it comes up, I'm always stunned by how much warmer your house gets in mild (chilly, even) sunny conditions in spring and autumn compared to ours, given we have the same construction type and comparable window U values. During those recent days of warm sunny weather, I doubt our house got much above 21-22°C, without any form of cooling on.

A cynic would say that the building regs standards also reflect building industry pressure to allow them to continue building relatively low-spec boxes, even where that spec (and hence running costs) could be improved without too much extra build cost.

I think I've done 5 or 6 time management courses over the years. I'm still bloody hopeless at it, and what little I have learned in this area certainly hasn't come from any of those courses.

My wife did some feminist studies as part of a politics degree, and yet I was the one on our team who successfully answered a quiz question about this phrase last week. It's a bit of a feminist rallying cry - disappointed you didn't know it Joe! "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"

We self-installed Wunda stuff. Good price and gear, and been working flawlessly for over 4 years. I've been particularly impressed with the Wilo pump. I can't comment on the Grundfoss one that they also supply, but the Wilo one is completely silent in use.

I assume you mean the touch switches? I don't have any of those - very expensive for what they do imo. All mine are simple retractive switches - two-way rockers for the blinds and single push for the lights and other controls. The flexibility is all in the programming. For example, clicking the same switch in the living room can be set up to give you a different scene depending on whether it's before or after dusk. I could program a light switch so that holding it down for some (programmable) length of time triggered basically anything - open a garage, turn on MVHR boost - basically anything connected to the system. I've set things up so you don't need to muck about with an app or mess with the system unless you decide to change or add something). I definitely don't want to interact with "smart" switches or, worse, touch screens just to turn a light on or off.

Actually, you'd need to add a DMX extension for a couple hundred quid too, although there might be some sort of third party converter you could use instead.

I'm not really aware of anything like that, sorry. There's no real easy way to learn all this stuff - an unfortunate side-effect of extreme flexibility is complexity, even though no individual element is particularly complex. You could take a look at the Functional Categories section of the LoxWiki. There are at least some lists of interface options. The English language Loxone Google Group contains a huge amount of info, but unfortunately it's not organised. This thread discusses relay alternatives, as an example.

This could be done a lot more cheaply now. Potentially the only expensive/proprietary thing you'd need to buy is the Miniserver (the Go version @£300), then you'd run the rest of it with cheap DMX/IP modules.

I'm not sure what I paid, sorry - it was 5 years ago. I think it was of the order of £2.5-3k, which included the miniserver (the brains of the system), a DMX module, air extension module, two or three extension modules and a couple of nano air units (remote wireless relay/input modules). The miniserver includes a KNX bus, so you can run a limited version of a KNX network off it. If I were doing it again, I'd probably use a lot more off-the-shelf DMX- or IP-controlled relays and input boards. The cost per input/output is an awful lot lower that way. For me, the biggest advantage of Loxone is the object-based programming. It's just incredibly powerful and intuitive if you have a fairly logical mind. The closest thing I've seen to it is Node Red, which can be used with things like OpenHAB. Despite the cost and some initial frustration with cheap dimmers I initially installed, I wouldn't be without it. The ability to double click the light switch beside my bed and have all the lights in the house turn off alone is virtually worth the price! That same double-click could be used to close a gates, turn off some outside lights, and turn on a perimeter alarm. I also have a switch at the bottom of the stairs which turns off all lights upstairs, and a similar switch on the landing that does similar for the downstairs lights.